Zo's Size Fits All In Time Of Need

DAVE HYDE COMMENTARY

February 21, 1999|DAVE HYDE COMMENTARY

MIAMI — He once was Zo. And Zo once was he. Same age. Same size. Same dreams as college freshmen when, in their first game no less, Martin Williams met Alonzo Mourning at center jump in one of those fancy Hawaiian basketball tournaments.

"I remember everything about that game," Williams was saying now. "I remember I had 21 points. He had 18."

He laughed. "He didn't play the whole game."

This was a few minutes after the Heat's win Saturday, and Mourning sat at his locker, surrounded by media, a personal bodyguard waiting to one side. Williams watched it all. This is how he always pictured fame. He grew up in Miami. He has followed the Heat since its first year.

"I dreamed of being in here, you know, for real," he said.

Instead, he was here because life can be far too real. The man who wanted to walk in Mourning's shoes actually wears them today thanks to Mourning's kindness. As well as Mourning's shirt. And Mourning's personally tailored black, pinstripe suit that is made out of a wool so fine that Williams rubbed the lapel between his thumb and forefinger, saying, "This is beautiful."

A month ago, Williams' Miami home burned down. A 4-year-old nephew was playing with some matches one minute, and the next minute Williams' crying sister was calling him at work.

No one in the house was hurt, and Williams is forever thankful for that. A single parent, his two small daughters were in day-care at the time. Everyone else got out of the house safely.

But the house was destroyed as well as everything in it. Worse, the contents weren't insured.

"All I had left were the clothes on my back at work that day," Williams, 30, said.

He wore them every day to work for a month. He grew tired of seeing himself in the mirror. But he had no choice. It wasn't just that he had no money. It was that, even when fellow workers at the Florida Department of Labor pitched in with some money, Williams was met with another problem.

He couldn't find any store-bought clothes that fit. He is 6-foot-9. He went to all the malls. He went to all the shops. He tried all his friends.

"No luck," he said. "My friends are at the most 6-6 or 6-7, and so there wasn't any chance of their clothes fitting me."

Normally, he would have clothes made for him. But his situation was anything but normal now. He needed money to buy clothes for his girls, Shanice, 5, and Tarika, 3.

He tried returning the 1993 Chevy Suburban he had bought two weeks before the fire.

"They wouldn't take it back," he said.

He tried getting a loan.

"That didn't work out," he said.

Finally, a co-worker named Howard Watson sent an e-mail this week to Tim Donovan, the Heat's media director. The e-mail told of Williams' plight and his decade-old basketball link with Mourning. It also noted that Mourning and Williams were the same size and any extra clothes would be appreciated.

When Donovan told Mourning, the Heat center said he had a closet full of help. Donovan went over to Mourning's home and filled three big boxes with clothes and another one with shoes an estimated $70,000 worth in all.

Williams watched Saturday's Heat win with his two daughters in the pinstripe suit and size-17 shoes Mourning gave him. His seats were courtside. Mourning donated those, too.

Wililams once had all these courtside dreams of basketball, the way a lot of kids do. His career didn't the marquee lighting its way like Mourning's has.

Williams went from Carol City High to the University of Hawaii-Hilo. He lasted there a year, came back to Miami-Dade, later played at Livingstone College in North Carolina.

He played a season with the Ohio Raptors of the Continental Basketball Association. He made $500 a week.

"That's more than I'm making now, even with a college degree," he said.

Mourning was finished talking with the media after the game and now he turned to Williams. They hadn't seen each other since this week's happenings. They had met just that one game in Hawaii 10 years ago.

"Yeah, I remember you," Mourning said. "I remember all the faces that I've played against."

"You remember that game?" Williams asked.

"Yeah, you scored more than me that night."

"But you didn't play the whole game," Williams said. "You didn't have to. You guys were winning by so much."

"We got the win, you're right."

Sports today isn't always easy. We put up with the agents and the egos and the contracts because at its center sports still can touch our hearts. Sometimes it can be something as difficult as a moment only a great athlete can create.

Other times, like Saturday, it can be something as universal as giving the shirt off your back.